Nightmare
by The juju was up inside my horn
Summary: Hygiene issues in sleeping bags.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing and make no profit. All things Boosh belong to Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding.

**Summary:** Hygiene issues in sleeping bags.

**Nightmare**

All was silent in the zookeepers' cabin. Mostly. Howard's rapid breathing aside, and the faint scratch of his moving fist against the sleeping bag. He was trying to hold it up and away from him with his other hand so it didn't make a noise but he kept forgetting. Concentrating too hard on the hand holding his cock to think about much else.

Vince was asleep, curled slightly around his pillow like it was a large white rectangular teddy bear - of course, _Vince_ would call it an oblong, but it was definitely a rectangle. Howard could see the corner of it poking up next to Vince's cheek every time he glanced at him to make sure he was still sleeping. He slept like the dead. Nothing could wake him up until he was good and ready, no alarm clock, no loud music, no shouting in his ear. Howard was quite safe, there was no _way_ Vince was going to wake up.

"Howard?"

Howard went very still.

"Howard? Howard. Howard. Howard! Howard. Howard? Howard. How-"

"_What_?"

"What are you doing?"

He was so close to finishing, he couldn't quite bring himself to remove his hand. He just tried to act natural, act cool, as if nothing was wrong. Men of Action could still be men of Serenity and Calm when they needed to, yes sir.

"Nothing. Go back to sleep, little man, you know you'll have dark circles under your eyes in the morning if you don't."

"I can't sleep, can I? You're all fidgety, you woke me up. You're shaking the floorboards. Were you having a nightmare?"

"Um."

Not exactly a nightmare. More like a fantasy. Long lovely lady fingers, like drips of cream, sliding down his chest to...

He squeezed gently without realising he was going to, and had to turn his gasp into an awkward and very fake cough.

"Yes. Yeah. A nightmare, that's right, haha. But it's over now, isn't it? So you can just go back to sleep."

"Oh."

For a minute he thought he'd got away with it, pulled the wool _right_ over young silly innocent Vincey's eyes, until Vince started moving in a clumsy sort of jump-shuffle-roll, bringing the L of their sleeping bags round to like a closing set of compasses and suddenly looming over Howard's face. He looked like a pale blue ghost of himself in the moonlight streaming through the cabin window.

"Were..."

He trailed off and bit his lip, studying Howard's sweaty forehead and burning cheeks. Howard tried as hard as he could to look sleepy and peaceful and very very far away from what _had_ been shaping up to be an extremely worthwhile orgasm.

"Were you... having a wank?"

"No," Howard said immediately. "No. No! Hahahaha. Honestly, Vince, what sort of a question's that?"

"Were you, though?" He wasn't quite meeting Howard's eyes. He kept looking away and back again and away again, flickering and hesitant, and Howard thought he could see a little almost-smile tugging the corner of Vince's mouth as he began to struggle his top half free of his own sleeping bag.

This close, Howard could feel the heat coming off his sleep-flushed skin, smell things like toothpaste and shampoo and the scent of washing powder Vince didn't even know how to use clinging to his pyjamas which were, oh dear, suddenly touching him. Blue cotton choo-choo pyjamas so old they'd gone all comfy and fleecy, just brushing the bare skin of Howard's arm as Vince leaned closer to look at him. Both sides of his mouth were almost-smiling now.

"Don't touch me," Howard said, quickly.

"I wasn't gonna," Vince murmured, gaze slipping away again as his hand moved, not to Howard's face, as he'd been expecting, but across his body to the zip of his sleeping bag. He began to pull it down, very slowly. The buzz of little metal teeth seemed thunderous.

Howard knew, with the sensible part of his brain, that he should probably move his hand now, but the other part of his brain, the part he hated because it did things like make him tell jokes to girls he fancied that he'd already told to _other_ girls he fancied and not been lucky with, that part had him frozen completely still. He couldn't move. He could barely breathe. The tiny click-click-click of the zip was hypnotic, and Vince was really smiling now. A crooked sort of smile, because he had a bit of his lower lip caught between his teeth in a very strangely interesting nibble, but definitely a smile. He kept shifting his eyes, the zip to Howard's face, Howard's face to the zip, dragging it down and down and down...

"I _knew_ it!" Vince yelled, shrill with glee. "I knew you were doing a wank into a johnny, you old freak! Leroy said he seen you in Boots with a basketful!"

Howard hadn't realised he'd been holding his breath until it came out of him in a gigantic infuriated sigh.

"Vince! You _never_ enter the sanctity of another man's sleeping bag without invitation!"

"I never did enter it! You've got it pretty full enough yourself, you and Little Howard in a rain mack down there..."

"Stop laughing!"

Vince did _not_ stop laughing.

"C'mon," he spluttered between giggles, "it _is_ pretty funny, you gotta admit."

"You don't stop laughing, I'll come at you like-"

Oh god that was the wrong thing to say. Vince was in tears.

"Like a grumpy prickly red-faced tiny-eyed cactus? You're gonna come at me like one of them? You'll have a job, you've got a johnny on."

Howard scowled so hard he couldn't see past his eyebrows and tried to cover himself back up - impossible, Vince was sitting on the top flap of his sleeping bag. "Haven't you ever heard of safe sex?"

"Yeah, mate, but I _think_ that's what you do when you're with someone else and don't wanna get a baby, innit?"

"It's quite sensible, thank you very much, if you think about it," Howard snapped. "Release a bit of tension, you know, safely and hygienically, _without_ having to get up in the middle of the night to change your bedding."

"Howard. It's amazing. You're like this new undiscovered species of PRUDE. Just... let it go. Monsoon Moon," he added slyly, smirking like an imbecile. "Might as well get your money's worth at the launderette, yeah?"

Howard glared sharp, icy daggers at Vince until he'd tucked himself back into his sleeping bag and rolled away to his own spot, still letting out the odd helpless hoot of laughter, then turned his back on him and, finally, moved his hand. There'd be no releasing of tension tonight. He wasn't really in the mood any more. What an awful waste of a condom.

Also, he decided, from now on Vince could take his _own_ sleeping bag to the launderette.

...


End file.
